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Media Production is dominated by global institutions with national audiences?

Disney is a huge global institution which has been going strong for many years and have very good reputation at reaching a large demographic across the world. As Disney is a global institution they have a large amount of power with their name, despite being based in the USA their films and products reach out over all continents and do so successfully. As a result of this Disney make more profit internationally than nationally, more than 50% of all sales of Disney related products are from an international market. Apart from products being sold internationally such things as the Disney Land theme parks are spread across the globe in such places as Paris, Tokyo and Florida. Disney also sell toys with McDonalds meals around the world, McDonalds are literally all other the world and are perhaps one the biggest fast food distributers in the world. Even if people don’t but the Disney toys with the meals they are still shown Disney advertisement which will benefit the company still.

When Disney bought Pixar in 2006 for a sum of 7.4 billion they added the company to the list of assets that they already own, Pixar is perhaps one the most notable companies that Disney own. Despite being only bought by Disney in 2006 Pixar have released a large number of films with Disney’s funding help years before the actual deal. Disney buys companies such as Pixar so that other large companies don’t use them and make potential profits which could have been obtained by Disney. Unlike smaller companies Disney can afford to buy smaller companies simply because of the amount of money and also power they have to their name. Another reason why Disney do this is because is to beat their competition, any new technologies that will put them ahead of rivals are extremely beneficial when it comes to sales. Doing something that another production company can’t do is also a major selling point when marketing their products. When Toy Story was released in 1995, 3d animation was seen as being in primitive stages, but Disney managed to successfully create a full length feature film using the new technologies.

Disney use convergence to reach a larger potential audience, by collaborating with companies who also have strong reputations large market audiences, Disney are able to a new audience who would have before not have been introduced to a certain Disney product. One of the most famous examples of Disney convergence is the 10 year deal they had with Disney from 1996 to 2006. In this example of convergence Disney provided toys which go with certain McDonalds meals such as the ‘Happy Meal’. Advertisement for Disney films were also displayed in McDonalds restaurants and on the packaging of McDonalds products. Both companies benefited heavily from the deal as they got their products seen from another audience who would potentially spend money on the products. For example if a McDonalds customer was to walk into one of the McDonalds restaurant and buy a meal with ‘Toy Story’ printed on the side of the packaging, there would be a strong chance that the customer would read it and become interested. As for McDonalds benefiting an example would be say if a person had just recently watched a Disney film at the cinema and then watched an advertisement showing Disney toys available of a character from the film, if the person really enjoyed the film then there would be a chance of them going for McDonalds for the toy or other promotional offers.

Disney offer a multiple number of different services which are used by a global audience daily, many of the services are provided through the internet which has a huge amount of users. Some of these services include ‘Disney Online’ which is there official website which is targeted at a multiple number of different demographics. For example there is whole section dedicated to children’s games and services, many of the games will be related to new Disney releases, this effectively is advertising merged with entertainment. The advantage of using the internet is that Disney are also able to advertise their films and products there as well as the services provided. Disney advertisements are displayed on a number of different social networking websites where hundreds of millions of users regularly visit, social networking has rapidly gained popularity in the past 5 years, in the early days it was Myspace that was primary site of choice and nowadays it mainly facebook. Disney don’t let opportunities slip by and keep up with the times by following the trends, the social networking trend is a great example of Disney keeping up with the times.

In terms of dominating a national audience, I believe that Disney are extremely successful at doing so in an effective manner. As Disney is a huge conglomerate company with many assets to the companies name, they have gained over the year a global audience that consumes their products and films resulting in the Disney company making billions each year. Disney understand that the majority of their audience is in fact from outside the US borders, there for more effort is put into marketing globally. Disney also keep up with the times and always try to be ahead of their competition by using modern technologies, they have done this in the past when first working with Pixar.